Time Management at Khan Academy | Hacker News Reader

Time Management at Khan Academy

engineering.khanacademy.org

144 pointsjohncs29 comments

I tried maybe times. Every system I put into place quickly bores me to death, it kills my creativity and my brain then tries really hard to escape from it. Anyone else in that situation?

The only trick that really stuck to me is to write down on a piece of paper where I'm at during a context switch. That really helps to pick it up again faster afterwards.

I think for me the fundamental problem is I don't have a big stake in my work as a regular employee. You just can't make yourself run at full throttle for 8 hours a day 5 days a week, plus (unpaid) overtime.

Work is getting stupid now. All the gains go to someone else for most people.

Everyone says they "tried X for a few weeks but let it lapse". Is this because ultimately we cannot work full throttle without big incentives?

Yes we all have fear as a driver but I find this wears off quick.

> The only trick that really stuck to me is to write down on a piece of paper where I'm at during a context switch.

Oh, maybe I do that too? I'm not sure if I blame this on my memory, but sometimes to do X I need to do Y and then Z (specially when starting a project), and then I forget why I was doing Z in the first place. I'm using Trello for doing things at work, and after a "Doing" column, I put a "Doing now" that usually has only one task to simulate the writing in a piece of paper. Sometimes it turns out into a "stack" of tasks with the switchs. It's usually really short term tasks. Not sure if you are talking about something like that.

Before that I used to write in my notebook what my task was, so I don't lose focus.

I find this incredibly useful. I work on a relatively small tech team as a lead/project manager/manager and every so often I get very busy where I only have 1-2 hours a day to do my dev work. I've also seen other devs and sysadmins collapse under a work load where they were in meetings all day every day. It can be very tough to get a schedule set where you're able to work on your top priorities, so I value these stories and techniques.

Would you be interested in trying our beta [1] once it's ready? We're working on the hypothesis that bad meeting schedules can result in a large drop in productivity, especially for software related jobs.

Our current solution is to make it easier to cordon off blocks of time and easily reschedule disruptive meetings using a mix of auto-suggested times and meeting polls.

[1] http://www.timeferret.com

I'll try it out, thanks :)

The responders seemed to be hard core type A. That said, I found that it's really useful to avoid context switching. Typically I pack calls in on Friday afternoon and have meetings at the end of the day. Sales calls can be exhausting so it's better to get work out if the way first. And avoid context switching as much as possible (more time blocks).

whats type A?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_A_and_Type_B_personality_...

I have zero techniques or schedules or habits for productivity. After reading this a part of me wonders if I should....but another part of me thinks that most people don't, and its only type A people who could respond to that question with anything other than "go with the flow".

For me, I simply cannot do something like spend an hour on Monday morning to plan what I need to get done that week, because I simply do not know. I could plan what I think I need to get done, but I know that before noon it will all change so why bother?

I do know what my priorities are, and I work on them as time allows, but I cannot plan when things will get done.

Time Management for System Adminstrators offers advice along the following lines (but it works for many technical support roles):

Find a like minded person and agree to a support shift: person A will handle interruptions in the morning so persona B can work on projects, then person B will handle interruptions in the second half of the shift so person A can work on their projects.

Written by Tom Limoncelli.

He and Christina Hogan has also written "The Practice of System and Network Administration" which deals with everything else schools didn't tell you about Systems Administration including chapters on hiring/firing, negotiations from both sides of the table and more ;-)

Generally I try to block my days off so the 4 hours before lunch are for going deep, and after lunch is for planning, interacting with coworkers and creative exploration. I like to create my "deep work" plan for the next day right before I leave, and make sure everything is organized so I can just sit down and focus when I arrive in the morning.

I used to be an avid GTD follower (David Allen's "Getting Things Done"). The book was an epiphany for me, but the whole system can be overwhelming. I now just use three text files (for work-related planning) for a Kanban-like system:

  * work due today
  * work due this week
  * work due this month or later

Every Monday, I pull work from the monthly list to this week's list. Then every day I pull work from this week's list to today's list. This allows me to focus on today, confident that I am not missing something. I can then ignore anything that doesn't need to be done until later. This is the theory, at least. ;-)

This is pretty good if you want an actual personal Kanban board: http://greggigon.github.io/my-personal-kanban/

I use it for my to-dos at work.

I spent a lot of time thinking about kanbans, only to realise org-mode can be very easily turned into one.

And IMHO an outliner is much more flexible than a webapp.

I also read David Allen's book and the one thing that stuck with me and made a significant difference was his two minute rule. If a task will take only a couple of minutes, just do it.

Would you want your builder to make you a house just "going by feel"? Or a surgeon to operate on you with the idea that "he's just going to poke around and play it by ear"?

When the stakes are high people think ahead, organize, and make plans. If you consider your career progression to be low stakes by all means don't plan.

I was hoping this was a course on time management. Stories are useful but do little to reinforce the behaviors necessary to develop good time management skills.

What's most impressive for me in the first answer (that perhaps might not get noticed by everyone) is the self-awareness of when one's most productive times are. I think knowing this can really help anyone get more done because you can re-schedule your day to suit when you're best at doing creative/routine/mind-intensive tasks most effectively and efficiently.

Those first two sound like pompous self important over achievers in the worst way. The other two sound very straightforward and down to earth. I'm guessing the latter are the ones that do the work and the former are managers.

I've worked extensively with both of the first two and they are excellent teammates; I'd be happy to work with either of them again. They are both very productive, and your hypothesis that they are both managers is incorrect.

Some highlights you may want to relay to them if you know them.

> Given my couple-year goals, am I focusing on the right spheres in my life?

> my professed purpose is "expand the reach of human knowledge and ability"; my current vision is "do that by making powerful ideas more learnable and by helping more people become life-long learners"

> which I create based on what I and my team are accountable for delivering to the company.

> I can't ignore my email, but I also can't let it dominate me. <- dominate? wtf?

That's just a few examples but this stuff is pretty cringey and detached from basic humanity.

The first literally says she is a manager in the post.

Well, that fact combined with me saying they are not both managers must mean that Andy is not a manager.

Seems unfair to claim "Elizabeth's post makes it sound like she's a manager-type" when she literally says she is a manager in the post.

Why are engineering blogs littered with this kind of stuff? Who cares? The only blog I ever liked is the tech blog from Netflix.

Sort of agree but I would've liked to see how John Resig manages his time.

That said, Khan Academy has some interesting tech:

http://engineering.khanacademy.org/posts/aphrodite-inline-cs...

I find these sorts of posts more useful than blog posts about web scale technology. They're more relevant to a much wider group of people. For example, while it's interesting that Netflix are migrating their billing system to AWS, and the way they solve their problems is fascinating, the actual technology stuff is only useful if you're likely to face a similar problem, and the chances are you aren't. In fact, if you're reading their blog posts to learn things, you're probably going to massively over-engineer your next web app.

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